Kitchen Garden

The Kitchen/Garden program at Elizabeth South began at the end of 2014 with the design and construction of our amazing kitchen space and the garden that students continue to maintain all year round. We have since added our chicken coop complete with 5 happy chickens and have extended our garden area. Students use the produce from the garden to create delicious meals in cooking classes. The program aims to link the garden, the kitchen and the final food on a table. The emphasis is learning about food and encouraging children to eat a wide variety of meals.

All classes spend one afternoon a fortnight with Miss Holloway, our Kitchen/Garden specialist. During this time they have both a garden and a kitchen lesson. This allows them to harvest the produce needed for the recipes they are cooking that day.

In their garden sessions, student are involved in planting seeds, harvesting garden beds, weeding, creating and working with compost, discovering insects and other animals, understand plant life cycles, working in groups and collaborating with each other, working safely with tools and a range of other garden related activities.

Some of the produce we grow in our garden include strawberries, tomatoes, eggplant, chillies, potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, various herbs, beans, onions, watermelon and pumpkin. Students are encouraged to take an active role in choosing what we plant and have learnt a considerable amount about seasonality in different climate zones.

During their time in the kitchen, children learn about kitchen safety, using a range of kitchen equipment, preparing and serving food, healthy eating, working in groups and collaborating with others. Students are responsible for washing their dishes and cleaning their kitchen area. We have a couple of wonderful volunteers who participate in kitchen lessons each week. The volunteers each help a group of students to understand and create the recipe. We also have some older students who volunteer to support our Junior Primary classes.

We have been extremely fortunate to have had ongoing and generous support from Stratco at Gepps Cross. They have provided us with our original raised garden bed, copious amounts of potting mix, garden tools and continue to supply us with an extremely generous variety of seedlings. Our garden would not be as abundant as it without them!

In addition to this, we are grateful to receive ongoing support from the Elizabeth Rotary Club and VIP inc. They have taken a keen interest in our Kitchen/Garden project and without their support we would not have our garden shed, chicken coop or compost bays.